Do you even have to ask this question: “Do FB Ads Work?”. Yes, because Facebook Advertising isn’t for every business.
Let’s be upfront about it while you can think whatever you want about Facebook and it’s advertising platform.
Straight off the bat, Facebook does not allow a few verticals or industries to advertise on it’s platform – blatant promotion of weight loss products, make money online ads, work from home ads, MLM, dating, sex, alcohol, tobacco, and many others.
Please do read Facebook’s advertising guidelines and not that these guidelines keep changing every time.
But that’s an obvious one, right?
What can be a few other situations when Facebook ads will not work for your business?
Let’s review a few possibilities:
Your business Is Not Ready Yet
Don’t mind me saying this, but sometimes, it’s not the Facebook platform that should take the blame for you not thinking through your business and marketing strategy.
Work your way backwards and think about your own business before you think of launching campaigns and doing advertising.
Answer these questions to help yourself:
- How exactly is my offering better than that of my competition?
- What’s the compelling offer I am making?
- What’s my USP?
- Why should anyone consider buying my products or services?
- How many people can claim to back up the crazy USP I have? What’s my social proof like?
Are you making a strong offer?
Many businesses out there seem to have lots of opinions about whether or not they should make an offer when they launch a campaign.
I’ll tell you this: You aren’t Apple.
So, you’d have to do something to move the juggernaut.
Throwing away a 10% discount might or might not help (you’ll only know if you test your offers) but these offers are boring.
Everyone and their dog is making offers such as those and it won’t help your cause if you make weak offers.
Think bold, outlandish, crazy, and pioneering.
What’s the offer you can make that your competition can’t even think of?
Need some inspiration? Here are a few examples of Facebook ads that are inspiring.
No Content Marketing to Backup Your Ads
The digital era spawned an age of “earning trust”. Brands are now publishing, creating content, sharing content, and engaging big time with users across the board – on social, on email, on mobile, with content, and more.
For every brand that does this (and when I say “brand”, I mean every business out there no matter how small or big), their chances of doing well online are higher. Brands and businesses with blogs get more leads and attract more relevant potential customers to their web properties.
Businesses active on the web will eventually end up spending less and gaining more due to the compounding effect of content marketing and paid advertising working in tandem.
With all that heavy work of Content working for you, the Facebook ad campaigns you’ll run will have more traction and more reach. It’s as simple as that.
As Neil Patel puts it,
High quality, relevant content is a long-term strategy that boosts your search engine ranking, improves the quality of your landing pages, builds your authority and strengthens brand awareness. Content marketers are also excellent storytellers, which can inspire the content of your pay per click ads.
And….
“Combining content marketing and pay per click advertising allows you to capitalize on your content marketing strategy while you wait for the search engines to catch up and start delivering those search results.”
Don’t just sit on your ass while you spend on PPC ads. Combine your efforts with Content marketing as well.
In fact, if you did content marketing well enough, you might not even have to spend on advertising at all.
You Think of Advertising as Pushing
Blame the traditional ways of advertising that we are so used to – across media like television, radio, and print – that we’d think that if we push Facebook ads hard enough, we’ll succeed.
You won’t.
Why, you ask?
Because of the Internet – and especially social media with Facebook sitting right on top – is a different media.
People aren’t on Facebook to buy. Neither are they interested in what you want to sell. They are just there because they want to have fun. Meanwhile, you’d like to interrupt them with your ads (which is fine, and that’s why we are all here).
However, don’t do the mistake of thinking that you’ll get away with mindless pushing.
For instance, not working on your ads such as changing ads completely, tweaking your audiences, optimizing your campaigns, etc., when your ad’s frequency goes high is a disaster because this is the equivalent of pushing your ad way too much for the same audiences.
The more aggressive you get and the more you push, the worse your results are going to be.
If you tick all of the boxes above and if your business isn’t frowned upon by Facebook’s ad review teams, you are all good to go.
Enjoy your campaigns and profit from them.